What Flow States, Nietzsche, and The Shadow Life Can Teach Us About Discipline

Does discipline need to be boring?

You’re probably an expert on discipline.

Given the number of articles about it, I expect most people are.

Discipline has been done to death. At this point, do we not know everything there is to know?

We tend to think of discipline as perfunctory, mundane, quiet.

But does it have to be?

I want to provide 3 new perspectives on the topic that might unleash some of the chaos lurking within.

“One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

1. Flow States – The Optimal State of Inner Experience

Discipline involves doing things we don’t like. And doing things we don’t like is boring.

So how can we fix that?

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book “Flow: The Psychology of Happiness” outlines that our best moments are the ones that we make happen.

These are moments when a person is stretched to their limits, in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.

Consider an Olympic athlete in the midst of their final race. Their lungs are burning, muscles pumping, consumed by anxiety and fatigue.

From a physiological standpoint, this is as close to torture as it gets.

But these moments will later be recalled as some of the best of their lives. The pursuit of glory, of leaving an eternal mark on the world.

Mihaly wanted to understand how people felt when they most enjoyed themselves and why.

He studied artists, athletes, musicians, chess masters, surgeons.

He concluded that during their most enjoyable experiences, they experienced a state of flow.

“Flow – a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Flow states are moments of optimal experience. It is characterised by: intense focus, a sense of timelessness, and deep enjoyment of what you are doing.

So how does this apply to discipline?

Flow states allow us to enter superhuman states of focus and concentration. We are consumed by our task, and are willing to put in the effort into the sense of accomplishment that follows.

When we make flow states happen, by intentionally setting them up in the way Mihaly outlines, we achieve intense bouts of passion, meaning, and exhilaration from our work.

So how can we do this?

• Goldilocks Zone – Flow naturally occurs when the difficulty of an activity matches an individual’s skill level. Too easy and it will be boring, too hard and it can be off putting. The Goldilocks zone is the sweet spot of optimal experience.
• Intentional Concentration– Work typically makes us zone out, but counter-intuitively, by forcefully heightening our attention in small bouts we can become entirely absorbed in our present task.
• Immediate Feedback – Sports are a great way to achieve flow because there is built-in feedback. We know when we strike the ball well or serve an ace. Find ways to make your other activities have immediate feedback to hone your attention.
• Loss of Self-consciousness – The more we can forget about our ego concerns, and focus externally on the task, the easier it is to fall into a flow state and gain greater enjoyment out of our work.

2. Friedrich Nietzsche on Living Dangerously

“For believe me! – the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: – it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!” – Friedrich Nietzche

Let the above quote sink in for a second.

Nietzsche was an unorthodox thinker, who “philosophised with a hammer”, as opposed to the assumedly smaller, less crushing implements used by his peers.

In the above quote from his book “ The Joyous Science”, Nietzsche outlines the way he thinks we should best approach our lives.

But what exactly does he mean by live dangerously?

Nietzsche, despite his reputation, was an incredibly life-affirming thinker.

He believed more than anything in human flourishing, and a desire to move beyond the arbitrary confines of morality, or “Good and Evil”.

He wanted people to allow for more chaos in their lives than they could previously tolerate. To break free of social norms, religious dogma, ascetic lifestyles.

Nietzsche envisioned a life for humans that moved towards a love of fate, or ‘amor fati’. That we could overcome all perceived obstacles, and should we have to bear this existence an infinite number of times, that we would gladly do so.

To re experience all pain, joy, suffering, heartache over and over again– he called this the ‘eternal recurrence’.

So to ‘live dangerously’ is to embrace life completely. Grounded entirely in and by our experience, day after day.

And more than that, to strive towards human flourishing, individuality, and an overcoming of the lesser, animalistic human creature.

And so what does this have to do with discipline?

Here’s what you need to know:

• Contend With Nature – Nietzsche challenges us to set our sights higher than the arbitrary and shallow concerns of our day-to-day wants and desires. He wants us to aim at something infinite and eternal, a state of being that contends with nature, that has dominion over the elemental forces of fate, chance, and mortality.
• Discipline isn’t Boring – we think of discipline in this routine, linear fashion. But many great works, thinkers and ideas came during a flurry of madness and bouts of intense chaos. Rather than sticking to a dull schedule of say reading/writing for 30 minutes a day, allow yourself to fall into the chaos of your task.
• Let Your Instincts Drive You – Living dangerously is about taking yourself off the leash of social conformity, political dogma, even religious teachings. It is to strive to forge your own values and beliefs, like the Nietzschean “Superman”. Follow your instincts, and unlock the dancing start within.

3. The Shadow Life – Is it time to go pro?

“Ambition, I have come to believe, is the most primal and sacred fundament of our being. To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls.” – Steven Pressfield

Why is discipline hard for you?

Perhaps it’s because all this time you have been focused on the wrong thing.

Perhaps rather than full of energy, passion, and ambition, you remain in what Steven Pressfield coins “The Shadow Life”.

The shadow life is the life of the amateur. It is the pursuit of false objects, false ideals, and inverted ambitions.

Discipline channelled into these pursuits works against you, not for you.

“The long we cleave to this life, the farther we drift from our true purpose.” – Steven Pressfield

What then is the solution?

Pressfield argues we must ‘turn pro’. We must leave the shadow life, the amateur life, and become serious about our ambition.

Turning Pro is a choice. It is a commitment to our highest, fully realized self. A commitment to service, duty, and our innermost ambition.

“Turning pro is free, but it’s not easy… all you have to do is change your mind.” – Steven Pressfield

So how can we do this? How can we turn pro?

• Avoid Shadow Careers – If we are truly terrified of our own ambition, our true calling, we will pursue a shadow career. To fail at this is of no real consequence, because you have not entered the true arena.
• Be the Artist, not the Addict – addicts are the amateurs, plagued by the shackles of their unruly desires. The artist feels the pull of self-sabotage, but deals with this roadblock in a healthy way, putting their efforts into work and sacrifice.
• Exile is the Essential Condition of Humanity – at least, so the Gnostics thought. The human condition is one of suspension between the physical, mortal world and the higher realm of love, truth, justice, beauty, ideas. The artist feels this exile and keenness to reunite with the upper realm at the zenith of their being.

Eliminate the amateur, the one who knows he is hiding.

Once we turn pro, we are “renunciants who have glimpsed the face of God”. We are ready to hunt, to become consumed by ambition, and our true calling.